Naavi.org

On 2nd January 2017, the Government of India came out with a notification under Section 79A of ITA 2008 on a pilot scheme for notification of organizations under Section 79A as “Digital Evidence Examiners”. Since then some news papers are putting out reports which are not completely correct. We need to understand the notification and its purpose correctly and not be mislead by ignorant statements printed even by reputed news papers.

I refer to one such report in Economic Times under the title “India to finally get electronic evidence authenticators”which inter-alia made a statement

“In a move that will aid investigators and prosecutors, the Centre has finally decided to appoint “Examiners of Electronic Evidence“ who will be the only ones authorized to tell courts if an e-evidence is authentic “

This statement is incorrect and misleading and needs to be clarified.

In the same article, a senior IPS officer is quoted which reflects  a correct understanding. He says

“The first line of argument from the defence is that the footage or voice is doctored. Presently, material is sent to forensic labs based on court direction on a case-to-case basis. But we need one or more authenticators to who we can straight away go even before taking it to the court.Their seal and sign must qualify as concrete attestation before any court.”

Digital Evidence is presently part of almost all Court proceedings. In the past they have been used successfully to prosecute the offenders in cases both under ITA 2000/8 or IPC. The first case in which conviction was obtained with the use of electronic evidence being the main evidence to prove the crime was the “Suhaskatti Case” (Details available in two part judgement reproduced)  way back in 2004. Subsequently several Courts have taken cognizance of electronic evidence. The latest important judgement is the judgement of the Supreme Court in what is called the “Basheer Case”.

Other than these, several Courts have used electronic evidence to prove facts in a litigation both civil and criminal.

It is not as if the Courts have not admitted and appreciated any electronic evidence so far. In the past whenever an electronic evidence is presented in the Court, the evidence is first admitted on the basis of Section 65B certification. Later during trial, if any of the defendants have an objection, they may produce their own expert opinion to counter the evidence. The Court if it needs may then call a Forensic Expert acceptable to it to give his opinion in the matter.

This process will continue.

Presently Police often were requesting the Court for permission to send a seized hard disk or mobile to a Government Forensic Lab (There are a few private labs whose services have been used by the Police from time to time) and then the Government lab gives its analysis which is presented by the prosecution in the Court. If the Police proceeds with analysis without such a Court permission, there is fear that the evidence may be considered as having been unauthorizedly tampered with and the findings rejected. Hence Police will now be happy to get the notified labs to whom they can send the evidence. Obviously, such labs will be the CFSL and State level forensic labs.

By this notification, the Police may be able to speed up their investigation so that they can take the assistance of these accredited labs at the investigation stage itself.

If the defendant disputes the evidence he may request for a fresh independent analysis by requesting for a Cloned copy of the hard disk. The two experts may be cross examined in the Court to satisfy the Court one way or the other.

Section 79A is an enabling provision which states as under.

79A Central Government to notify Examiner of Electronic Evidence

The Central Government may, for the purposes of providing expert opinion on electronic form evidence before any court or other authority specify, by notification in the official Gazette, any department, body or agency of the Central Government or a State Government as an Examiner of Electronic Evidence.

Explanation:- For the purpose of this section, “Electronic Form Evidence” means any information of probative value that is either stored or transmitted in electronic form and includes computer evidence,digital audio,digital video,cell phones,digital fax machines”.

This section was introduced with the Information Technology Amendment Act 2008 and became effective from 27th October 2009. Under this provision the Central Government was empowered (Note the word “may”) to appoint any “agency of the Central or State Government” as an “Examiner of Electronic Evidence”. This is not meant for individual experts but only for an organization.

It is expected that the organization would follow certain standard practices which make their process reliable enough for the Court to consider the evidence certified by it as authentic enough to proceed with the trial.

It will be a standard process in all such forensic investigations that the lab will on receipt of a material (container of electronic document such as a hard disk, mobile, CD, pen drive etc”) create cloned copies so that any request for production of the evidence in the form in which it was presented to them is fulfilled.

We need to note that this would require money to be invested in buying additional hard disks and devices similar to the evidentiary objects. For example, if 10 hard disks are presented as evidence by the Police, the lab has to buy 10 similar hard disks to keep a cloned version of the hard disks. The Police would also perhaps have a cloned copy of their own created at the time of seizure. Thus there will be a proliferation of digital evidence storage devices and the labs will have to ensure that budgets for such expenses are provided for.

Why Digital Evidence Examiner’s Certification should be discretionary not mandatory?

Electronic evidence is admitted as evidence based on its Section 65B certification. This will be prima facie evidence for trial purpose.  Then the trial begins when one of the parties presents its findings of the evidence.  At this point of time, the interpretation of the evidence as presented by the presenter of the evidence will be admitted  as long as the evidence is  not challenged by the defendant.

This situation will be similar to say a signed letter presented in evidence on which the signature of the defendant is not challenged. If the signature is challenged in such cases,  the Court may invite a signature or handwriting expert to give his views.

Similarly, any electronic evidence admitted in a Court can be proceeded with without a further certification from the “Digital Evidence Examiner”. Where the Court on its own decision or when the evidence is disputed, it may be mandatory to seek the opinion of the examiner notified under Section 79A. However, the opinion of the examiner may still be challenged by the defense.

It will be the discretion of the Court to decide how much value they would place on the evidence before the certificate of the Digital Evidence Examiner and after such certification.

Meeting “Admissibility” criteria under Section 65B of IEA is mandatory but requiring the Certificate of a Digital Evidence Examiner need not be considered as “Mandatory”. It is discretionary.

Police may still consider it as a Best Practice

However, practically, Police may not like to present evidence in their hands without this certification so that they are not accused of shoddy investigation. So, in practice Police may adopt a practice of sending every electronic evidence for “Digital Evidence Examination” in an accredited lab.

The certification may improve the “Probative Value” of the evidence and make it more difficult for the defendant to get it termed “unreliable” by the Court.

But just because an evidence is certified by a “Digital Evidence Examiner”, Court cannot refuse to allow the defendant to question the evidence. This would amount to trampling of the rights of the defendant. 

In future Courts and the Police  need to dispassionately consider whether it is practical to send all digital evidence to such labs as a mandatory process and if so whether it is feasible to close any case in which Cyber evidence is involved (Which is almost hundred percent of all investigations) within reasonable time.

Imagine that in the case of every civil and criminal case involving written document, every such document has to be sent to a handwriting expert for certification. Such a demand would be impractical. However, in the interest of justice whenever there is a slight doubt about the authenticity of a written document, it is prudent to send it for the views of a handwriting expert.

Imagine the investigation of the molestation case which Bangalore police cracked recently from CCTV footage and Mobile Tower data. There will be hundreds of such cases in which truck loads of evidence in digital devices would be used and if all these are to be certified in the accredited labs, we are looking at a practical impossibility.

Hence, we should accept that the use of Digital Evidence Examiner should be considered as “discretionary” and not “mandatory”.  Whenever there is a “reasonable” (standard of reasonableness can be low to begin with) doubt as to the authenticity of an electronic document presented as evidence, then Courts may adopt a mandatory requirement of examination by an “accredited digital evidence examiner” (Which is an organization and not an individual) while the Police will continue to have the discretion to adopt it as a “Best Practice”.

I however state that if it is considered mandatory and all digital evidence is dumped on such labs, there will be a serious hit on the trials and the cyber criminals will be happy with the delays.

Despite what I have stated above, the notification was long overdue and is welcome. It was a necessary follow up of the ITA 2008 which was left unattended. Hence we welcome the move with caution.

(Follow up article)

Naavi

Classification of documents before distribution is one of the important activities of data managers in organizations. The better part of Information Security lies in properly classifying a document and tagging them properly for every end user to understand what he can do or not do with the document in his hands.

In this connection, it is interesting to observe the document tagging protocol used by US Cert named appropriately as the “Traffic Light Protocol (TLP)“.

Attention to this protocol was drawn with the Obama Government in USA publishing an FBI investigation document that probed into the hacking of e-mails of the Democratic National Committee by suspected Russian hackers which helped expose many of the secrets of Mrs Hillary Clinton and perhaps contributed decisively to the victory of Mr Donald Trump.

While the Obama administration has been livid with the hacking and revelations, and also taken action against many Russians being expelled and agencies being closed down, the information security observers note that the FBI document was released under the TLP as a “White” Document indicating that it can be distributed widely.

The TLP uses colour codes and nomenclatures to designate the documents and define the sharing boundaries.

There are four colour codes under the protocol and they indicate as follows:

“TLP:WHITE” indicates “Unlimited” boundaries for distribution.

“TLP:GREEN”: indicates that the information is meant for limited disclosure restricted to the community.

TLP:AMBER” indicates that the information is meant for limited disclosure restricted to the participant’s organizations

“TLP RED” indicates  “Not for disclosure”, and restricted only to the participants.

The complete definitions are found in the following table (Source: US CERT)

Color	When should it be used?	How may it be shared?
TLP:RED  Not for disclosure, restricted to participants only.	Sources may use TLP:RED when information cannot be effectively acted upon by additional parties, and could lead to impacts on a party’s privacy, reputation, or operations if misused.	Recipients may not share TLP:RED information with any parties outside of the specific exchange, meeting, or conversation in which it was originally disclosed. In the context of a meeting, for example, TLP:RED information is limited to those present at the meeting. In most circumstances, TLP:RED should be exchanged verbally or in person.
TLP:AMBER  Limited disclosure, restricted to participants’ organizations.	Sources may use TLP:AMBER when information requires support to be effectively acted upon, yet carries risks to privacy, reputation, or operations if shared outside of the organizations involved.	Recipients may only share TLP:AMBER information with members of their own organization, and with clients or customers who need to know the information to protect themselves or prevent further harm. Sources are at liberty to specify additional intended limits of the sharing: these must be adhered to.
TLP:GREEN  Limited disclosure, restricted to the community.	Sources may use TLP:GREEN when information is useful for the awareness of all participating organizations as well as with peers within the broader community or sector.	Recipients may share TLP:GREEN information with peers and partner organizations within their sector or community, but not via publicly accessible channels. Information in this category can be circulated widely within a particular community. TLP:GREEN information may not be released outside of the community.
TLP:WHITE  Disclosure is not limited.	Sources may use TLP:WHITE when information carries minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public release.	Subject to standard copyright rules, TLP:WHITE information may be distributed without restriction.

More details of the protocol can be found on the website of US CERT. Probably Indian corporates may also use similar tagging protocol for tagging their documents.

Naavi

I refer to the article “Here is how the Currency Shortage can vanish in a jiffy with “Digi-Real Currency” in which a solution to meet the current crisis of shortage of currency notes was discussed.

One of the amendments that RBI has announced on the Prepaid Cards appears to make the suggestion even more viable than what had been earlier.

In my earlier suggestion, I had preferred that the “Digi-Real Notes” which are paper instruments issued as “Zero Value” and with monetary value loadable by transfer of money to a digital account mapped to the instrument, be issued by Banks using their current infrastructure for printing cheque leaves. One of the reasons for this was to provide a sense of respectability to the paper notes which will obviously look less valuable than currency notes.

Now RBI has issued an amendment to its master circular on Prepaid cards vide its circular dated 27th December 2016 which appears relevant to our discussions.

According to the circular, the para 7.9 of the  master circular dated July 1, 2016 on Prepaid payment instruments has been amended.

The amendment is as follows:

i. Banks may extend the provisions of paragraph 7.9 of Master Circular on PPIs dated July 01, 2016 to include other entities / ‘employers’ such as unlisted corporates / partnership firms / sole proprietorship / public organizations like municipal corporations, urban local bodies, etc. (employers) for onward issuance to their staff / employees / contract workers, etc.
ii. Banks shall extend this facility only to those entities / ‘employers’ that have a bank account with them and after obtaining an undertaking that they are not availing of this facility from any other bank.
iii. Verification of the identity of the staff / employees / contract workers, etc. shall be the responsibility of the concerned ‘employer’. The bank should put in place proper systems to capture and maintain details of the employees to whom the cards are issued by the ‘employer’ along with copies of photograph and identity proof of such employees. The ‘employer’ is also required to make available details of bank accounts (if any) of the employees to the bank.
iv. Banks shall load/reload PPIs after obtaining necessary authorisation and above mentioned details of the employees/staff/contract workers, etc. from the ‘employers’.
v. Extant instructions of paragraph 7.9 (d), (e), (f) and (g) continue to be applicable.

 The above changes shall come into effect from the date of this circular.

With this amendment it is now possible for a number of Companies including unlisted companies and even the proprietary concerns to issue “Prepaid Cards” co-branded with their Banks by identifying their employees. It will be as simple like issuing identity cards. Once issued, the participating Bank can allow loading of money into the prepaid card.

As a result of this amendment, the burden of issuing KYC based prepaid cards by Banks will be delegated to a number of employers.

The “Digi-Real Notes ” as suggested is also a similar instrument (though it is not a card) and may be termed as a “One time use prepaid instrument” that is actually handed over by the transferor to the transferee. Now such instruments can be issued not only by Banks but also by other agencies.

However for the instrument to be widely accepted, the issuing company needs to have some respectability and the look and feel of the instrument has project a sense of confidence.

This circular will enable many Companies to issue such prepaid instruments/cards to their employees and relieve the problem of currency shortage.

We may however reiterate that if the Companies only issue “Cards” as per the circular, the holders will only be able to use it as a “Digital payment” under say RuPay network. The card remains with the employee and can be used for payment to merchants. It will not substitute currency.

But if the suggestion of the undersigned is accepted, the “Digi Real Notes” can be “One time use prepaid cards” that can be used as a substitute for currency of any denomination such as Rs 100 or Rs 500/- or Rs 1000/- and will completely eliminate the need for the actual currency. At a cost of issuing the plastic cards, employers need to issue  “Coupons” with their logo with whatever security feature they can accommodate within their budget. Employees can also be given an option to either pick up the “Cards” or “Digi-Real Notes”. A small charge can also be made to cover the cost.

I hope companies will consider this suggestion now that the legal aspect has been cleared. Even if private sector fails to respond quickly, public sector companies may move in quickly and create the precedence that can be taken up by others. This should meet the salary day rush for cash coming up in the next three days.

Naavi

A report in the times group of papers today, it was stated that the Government has mandated that Banks need to report “Breaches” in their systems within 2 hours to the Government.

TOI in its article titled “Government asks banks to share IT breach info within 2 hrs” reported that the Government had sounded alert to all the top banks that any breach in their IT systems need to be informed to the Government. The report was attributed to IT Secretary Ms Aruna Sundararajan.

The secretary  reportedly made a statement that “More regulation is needed to make the laws tougher, especially to fix liabilities and responsibilities of the service providers towards their customers,”

She seems to have also stated that “Stringent penal provisions will be mandated for any breach, and steps have been initiated to overhaul the IT Law of the country to make provisions in tune with the present-day requirements. The review is being undertaken in consultation with the Finance and Home Ministries.”

These tough looking statements are welcome.

However, the approach of the  Government to bring in new law is un-necessary and  time consuming and will not address the immediate requirement.

Presently, the key to protecting the consumers from any digital transaction related frauds and simultaneously also instilling a sense of responsibility in the Banks lies with the RBI in the simple solution of confirming its “Draft Circular” of August 11, 2016 as “Final operative circular.”

But, as always, RBI is dragging its feet perhaps unable to counter the pressures from the major Banks such as SBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank , Axis Bank and PNB for abandoning the circular altogether.

The key I am referring to is the issue of the “Limited Liability Circular of August 11, 2016” which was first issued in draft form and should have been re-issued by this time as an operative instruction.

The undersigned has sent many letters to the Governor of RBI and other executives as well as the Prime Minister Mr Modi and Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitely.

Unfortunately, neither Mr Modi nor Mr Jaitely seem to have been properly advised about the power of this circular or donot still feel that the push is called for and hence they are not focussing on this simple requirement that can go a long way in protecting the public who are being thrust into the digital payment system.

Despite a personal request from the undersigned, the Governor of RBI, Mr Urjit Patel, as well as their officials have failed to provide a satisfactory reply to my letter nor give an appointment to meet them personally and explain to them the urgency in this regard.

After several reminders and an RTI application, I have received a reply from Mr P.K. Mehrotra, Assistant General Manager, Department of Banking Regulation, Central Office, RBI, dated 23rd December 2016, stating as follows.

Quote:  

Please refer to your letter dated December 1, 2016 on the captioned subject.

In this connection, we advise that we are in the process of finalization of the circular taking into account the feedback received from public and banks.

 Unquote

 The public comments for the circular closed on August 31, 2016 and we are almost into the new year.  Hence the answer given by RBI can only considered as unsatisfactory and evasive.

It is clear that RBI, as always is unable to push through its regulatory measures on the influential Banks. In the meantime, Cyber Crime victims are waiting endlessly for justice when their hard earned money is siphoned off by fraudsters some of them exploiting the technical inadequacies in the system and some of them colluding with the Bankers.

The recent incidents where Bank employees have colluded with the black money operators in several parts of the country is a clear indication that Bank employees of today donot have the honesty which was once attributed to them by the public. If they can make money by laundering currency, it is eminently possible that many of them may be hand in glove with the fraudsters who commit cyber crimes. They are therefore not in favour of measures like the “Limited Liability for frauds for the customer”.

I have personal experience of Banks such as ICICI Bank, SBI, AXIS Bank and PNB supporting their fraudulent customers instead of the Cyber crime victims when they encounter a cyber crime.

The names of the three lady Chair Persons of prominent Banks such as Ms Arundathi Bhattacharya or Shika Sharma or Chanda Kochhar or the past Chairperson of PNB, Mr Kamat who became the head of IBA look responsible when they speak on CNBC TV.

But what public may not know is that all these Chair persons  have shown scant respect for Cyber Crime victims of their bank and donot deserve to be called “responsible”.

They seem to forget that the victims of bank frauds are their valued customers. On the other hand, they all seem to be more in favour of the “other” customer who has siphoned the money away from the victim and transferred it to their account. In most cases Banks have opened accounts for them  without following the KYC norms.

I urge Mr Arun Jaitely and Mr Modi to just check in how many cases of Bank frauds involving negligence of the Banks, these Chair persons have launched lengthy litigations to prolong justice to the victims. With the Government and CJI contributing to the delay in justice by closing down the Cyber Appellate Tribunal (CyAT), and the IT department floating fancy ideas of changing IT law and merging CyAT with TDSAT, there appears to be no room for optimism that the Cyber Crime victim’s plight will be addressed even by Mr Modi.

In this background the talk of  “Report incidents within 120 minutes” appear to be just a joke.

I wish the IT ministry or the RBI or even the FM and PM to challenge me on these comments and prove me wrong by doing the simple thing of getting the RBI’s draft “Limited Liability Circular of August 11” confirmed.

Can there be anything simpler than this in protecting the public from Cyber Frauds?

If you cannot do even this, how can we trust you will be able to implement the larger issues such as the “Cyber Security Framework” or “Security Operating Centers”?

…..The Nation wants to know..

Naavi

Around 2003, the undersigned had come up with a solution named “Digital Value Imprinted Instrument System” (DVIIS). This was a “Brick and Click” solution to many of the problems of physical instruments which have a monetary value including “Currency”, “Stamps”, “Tickets” etc. (One of the representative solutions is available here). The system could not be commercialized by the undersigned since proper support could not be gathered. At least two major IT companies who were privy to the idea could not see the commercial prospect and failed to take it up for implementation.

One of the implementations of the DVIIS was in what was called “ZE-MO Cards/Coupons”  (named as such because it was a Zero Memory smart instrument replacing the smart cards with larger memory).

It appears now that the idea was a little too early for the market at that time. But now when the country is struggling to find a solution to the currency shortage after demonetization, it appears that the Ze-Mo coupons are ideally suited to resolve many of the practical problems that we face today.

The essence of the Ze-Mo  system was that there would be a Zero Value physical instrument which would carry its value on the digital server mapped to the instrument. The instrument would be used to transfer value from one to other and could be used for “Digital Stamps”, “Tickets” and also as a “Currency Substitute”. When this concept was being discussed, we did not have the concept of “Pre paid, refillable” cards as we have today.

The “Ze-Mo” cards were promoted as thick paper labels with almost zero material cost (compared to smart cards which were expensive ) which would be distributed free by sponsorers who will have advertisement space on the label (Like UNO cards?) and let people fill it up with money before being handed over to the next person. The value would be verifiable at the server with reference to some code imprinted on the instrument. (It was suggested that this could include an invisible hidden code in addition to a visible code.)

At that time I had also suggested Ze-Mo coupons as a “Verifiable Currency” particularly of high value and repeated the suggestion in 2014 in my article “Black Money Policy of Narendra Modi.. Here is My Idea”. This was also published in naavi.org. At that time nothing was known about the demonetization that occurred on November 8, 2016.

Presently, we are struggling to ensure that the shortage of cash that has resulted from the demonetization does not derail the economy more than what we can bear comfortably. The opposition parties are doing their bit to not only create panic in the minds of the public so that they will hoard available new currency notes but also encouraging all kinds of malpractices in converting black currency stocks to new currency stock with the help of Banks and political party donations etc.

There is therefore an urgent need to energize  the system of “Digital Payment Infrastructure” and make it more efficient and secure.

It appears that the Ze-Mo system was well designed for this purpose and even now is well suited to quickly replace the withdrawn currency provided we pep up the earlier suggested instrument with

a) KYC back up

b) Slightly better security than what was envisaged.

One implementable solution is to permit all Banks to print of Ze-Mo slips/coupons like the Cheque leaves in all the security printers available which will look better than the simple labels that I had proposed earlier and sell/distribute it only to identified individuals who provide their Aadhaar number or their Bank number. (Cost of Ze-Mo coupons can be about 20-25% of the cost of printing of a cheque leaf even if similar security printing technology is used).

Banks can issue books of 100 such leaves to their customers which will be equivalent to any currency they wish to hold in any denomination as long as they have the funds in the back end account. (P.S: It may look similar to the Sodexo Coupons but the value would not be printed on the instrument and would only be available for online verification). Customers can use the 100 leaves as different denominations of currency in any mix as they like. Hence the question of shortage of any particular denomination does not arise at all.

The coupons will remain zero value until it is filled up by transfer from the account like charging a prepaid instrument. The difference between a Prepaid card and this coupon is that this would be handed over by the person making the payment to the person to whom the payment is being made.

Holders of these Ze-Mo Coupons would use either a mobile app or internet to transfer money from their existing bank account to the Ze-Mo coupons using the serial number as the mapping. Any person to whom it is handed over can simply check the same App or on the internet, what is the value of the coupon before he accepts it.  The query could be made available both on smart phones and on USSD codes so that the recipient gets an SMS as soon as he sends the number of the coupon to the server.

The coupons can later be either used as such for further transfer or extinguished. It is one of the suggestions that the coupons will have a validity period for transfer which will be short (say one month) so that it cannot be used for hoarding cash but has to be in circulation or extinguished.

Compared to the current system such as the mobile wallets, the UPI and USSD, the Ze-Mo system has a significant advantage in the sense that it gives a “Feel of Currency”. Most people would be very comfortable holding the coupon that looks like a bank cheque than nothing at all as in the case of pure digital wallet transaction.

Ze-Mo coupons also reduces the transaction load on the server at the time of transaction since the process of transaction validation by the recipient has to just verify a static data on the server  such as  (the hash value of the input) instead of validating a payment instruction on the fly and transferring the money from one account to another.

The actual money transfers occurs at a time different from the time of the transaction both for loading and unloading the money to the coupon from a bank account (at the payer’s end )and from the coupon to a bank account at the recipient’s end. This would address the problem of “Transaction peaking” at different points of time during the day creating server crashes.

Additionally, Ze-Mo coupons would reduce the number of digital transactions by at least a factor of two or three if we presume that the coupon is used for payment by the first recipient to at least one other person before it is extinguished.

The only risk is that some may forget to credit the coupon to his bank account and allows it to expire.

In such cases, an exceptional system can be made for the holder to go over to a Bank, submit his identity and get the money credited to his account. Obviously he will be answerable to the tax authorities if required.

Thus the Ze-Mo coupon system if introduced can quickly address the issue of shortage of currency which will be a huge political issue after 31st December 2016.

Naavi

More information on how ZeMo system can be adopted to banks (ppt prepared in 2003)